Victims Say Policy Does Not Add Up

Cpa Kept License Despite 8 Years Of Complaints

What does it take to get Florida regulators to revoke the professional license of a crooked accountant? That's what some of the accountant's victims want to know.

After eight years of complaints that Fort Lauderdale CPA Tanfield Miller had embezzled millions from his clients, after two federal grand jury indictments, and even after the financial adviser pleaded guilty and admitted that he embezzled millions from his clients, the state has yet to take any action against Miller's license to practice accounting.

On Monday, a federal judge sent Miller to prison for 10 years and ordered him to pay $2.3 million in restitution to his clients and other victims.

To date, the state has not taken action against Miller's license to practice.

Instead, Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation is allowing Miller to voluntarily relinquish his license, said Ed Towey, a spokesman for the department.

Miller turned in notice of voluntary relinquishment in mid-September. The announcement of acceptance came on Thursday, one day after the Sun-Sentinel checked on the status of Miller's license with the regulatory agency.

The state's Board of Accountancy is scheduled to vote next week on whether to accept Miller's relinquishment with the provision that he never reapply for a certified public accounting license in Florida.

"If the man deliberately did horrible things, why would you need permission from him to take away his license," asked Rose Fedder, whose son, Dr. Richard Fedder of Los Angeles, was ordered on Monday to receive $617,000 in restitution from Miller. Richard Fedder says Miller bilked him out of several million dollars.

State officials say that it is easier and less expensive to accept the financial consultant's relinquishment than for the state to revoke Miller's license.

Towey said the end result is the same: "The bottom line is that he will not practice in Florida ever again."

The relinquishment arrangement was news to both Rose Fedder and Dr. Howard Lifshutz, a retired Broward urologist, who was ordered on Monday to receive $1.3 million in restitution from Miller. Lifshutz says he was cheated out of several million, too.

Since 1987, both Fedder and Lifshutz have filed several complaints with the regulatory agency seeking to have Miller's license yanked. But the state has yet to conclude that probable cause exists to think Miller did anything improper.

Their most recent complaints were filed in April.

Towey said he could not comment on the status of the complaints because under state law the complaints remain confidential until a finding of probable cause by the professional regulation department is made.

Wouldn't Miller's guilty plea in May and admission in federal court to embezzlement, arson and looting pension funds constitute enough probable cause to warrant immediate revocation of a CPA's license?

Not necessarily, Towey said: "It sounds like he is getting special treatment or we are being lenient, but we have to do this by the book."

He said business and regulation department lawyers determined after Miller's guilty plea in May that he had stopped working as a CPA and that the public was therefore safe from any further crimes he might commit as a licensed CPA. They concluded that emergency action against the license was not needed.

"He was out of business," Towey said.

Lifshutz disagrees: "I believe when a legitimate complaint is filed the state has an obligation to investigate it to see if it is justified."